{"id":17990,"date":"2022-12-13T08:50:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T13:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2022-12-14T09:22:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T14:22:08","slug":"behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Scenes of Black Snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black Snow creator Lucas Taylor and producers Rosemary Blight and Kaylene Butler talk to <\/em>TV Drama about the origins of the series and collaborating with the Australian South Sea Islander community during production.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Lucas Taylor witnessed the opening of a time capsule in a small regional town in Queensland, he got the idea for a unique cold-case series. \u201cI was struck by the notion of, what if among the memorabilia that was in the time capsule\u2014the \u201990s music and the Sony Discmans\u2014there was a clue that sparked the fresh information on an unsolved murder from that town?\u201d the creator tells TV Drama<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That concept is what sparks the events of Black Snow<\/em>, produced by Australia\u2019s Goalpost Pictures in association with All3Media International. In 2019, the opening of a town\u2019s time capsule unearths a secret related to the 1994 death of 17-year-old Isabel Baker, whose unsolved murder devastated her Australian South Sea Islander community. A letter she wrote is included among the artifacts, claiming that \u201cpredators disguised as friends\u201d walk among the town. This results in a reopening of the case and the wounds it left behind, with Travis Fimmel as Detective Cormack taking over to discover what really happened.<\/p>\n

The series takes place across the two time lines, \u201cwith one being very deeply rooted in 1994,\u201d Taylor says. \u201cThere is a nostalgia for that period with audiences who are looking back to the time, but there\u2019s also a sort of lightness to the coming-of-age narrative that Isabel and her friends are going through in that part of the story. We know it\u2019s heading toward tragedy, but it\u2019s still quite a beautiful character-driven thread. The modern-day time line, meanwhile, offers \u201cthe ability to see how those 25 years had marked all of our characters,\u201d he explains. \u201cHow had it changed them? How had the trauma of Isabel\u2019s death affected each of our key characters across the time line?\u201d<\/p>\n

The overall story is rooted in the history of its location and the Australian South Sea Islander community of the area. Taylor himself is not part of the community, but he grew up in a sugarcane town in northern New South Wales. When researching crimes in the agricultural sector in order to craft a narrative around the sugarcane, he came across the community\u2019s tragic history and Australia\u2019s colonial-era crimes. Though the murder storyline is fictional, the series as a whole is rooted in the history of the community, whose ancestors from various Pacific Islands were kidnapped and forced to work in Queensland\u2019s sugarcane fields in the 19th century. The sugarcane and tragic history of the South Sea Islanders are interwoven and underlie everything that occurs both in the past and the modern day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis underlying story comes out of the cane,\u201d says Rosemary Blight, a founding partner of Goalpost Pictures and producer of the series. \u201cAs much as we spoke about the practicalities of shooting in the middle of nowhere in the sugarcane and how that\u2019s really not very sensible, it just kept drawing us to it. And we knew in a way that the location became\u2014and this is something that people say all the time\u2014it was a character.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowing the history of the community, it was important to Taylor, Blight and the rest of the team to make the production process highly collaborative with the local people. Kaylene Butler, whose ancestor was a chief stolen from Tanna Island, was a producer on the series and heavily involved alongside Blight. \u201cIt was a blessing that we\u2019ve been able to talk with our community [for] the story,\u201d Butler says. \u201cBlack Snow<\/em> was an opportunity for us to have a voice, a presence, especially in our community, but all the way to Tanna Island,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a documentary, but it feels like the right thing to do to tell our story, as we are forgotten people.\u201d<\/p>\n

A large portion of the cast are of South Sea Islander heritage, including several first-time actors, such as Talijah Blackman-Corowa, who plays Isabel, and Jemmason Power, who plays the grown-up version of Isabel\u2019s younger sister. Power notes that the team behind the camera had protocols in place before filming to ensure that everyone felt safe and respected, working to avoid stirring up intergenerational trauma. \u201cIt was a blessing to walk into this space,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was tangible, the work that was already laid out between Lucas and Rosemary and Auntie Kaylene, and that foundation of safety was there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The design of the set and costumes was also a highly collaborative process, with Helen O\u2019Loan working with Butler and local craftspeople, artists and seamstresses for the Baker house set-up and layout of the garden. Costume designer Vanessa Loh also partnered with local seamstresses for the outfit designs to ensure that everything was authentic to the local community during 1994 and 2019.<\/p>\n

Blight also notes that the composing team of Ziggy Ramo, a South Sea Islander descendant, and Jed Palmer went so far as to travel to Tanna Island with Butler, back to the village where her ancestor was stolen 150 years prior. While there, \u201cthey were gifted sounds and music from the chief in his village, which they then brought back to Australia and turned into a score,\u201d Blight says. \u201cSounds that you think are detective genre actually come from someone clapping on the island, someone throwing something, someone speaking. It all makes up part of the world [and] the sound of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even down to the name of the series, the show pays homage to the history of its location. Taylor explains that, prior to modern-day machinery, sugarcane was burned before being harvested. \u201cAll through harvest or crushing season, there would be these huge cane fires burning, and the winds would take the ash, and it would float like black snow down into the town,\u201d he says. \u201cAs kids, we would play in it because we didn\u2019t have real snow, but we had black snow. So, it really speaks to the sugar that\u2019s at the heart of the story, but also that period of the \u201990s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viewers can catch this collaborative story combining coming-of-age drama and whodunit mystery centered on the South Sea Islander community on Stan as the new year rings in on January 1. All3Media International is taking it out the global market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Creator Lucas Taylor and producers Rosemary Blight and Kaylene Butler discuss the origins of the series and collaborating with the Australian South Sea Islander community during production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1412,"featured_media":17991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,70],"tags":[314,5635,377,5638,5636,5637],"class_list":["post-17990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-all3media-international","tag-black-snow","tag-goalpost-pictures","tag-kaylene-butler","tag-lucas-taylor","tag-rosemary-blight","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nBehind the Scenes of Black Snow - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Behind the Scenes of Black Snow - TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Creator Lucas Taylor and producers Rosemary Blight and Kaylene Butler discuss the origins of the series and collaborating with the Australian South Sea Islander community during production.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-12-13T13:50:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-12-14T14:22:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2017\/07\/All3MediaInternational-BlackSnow-1222.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"337\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jamie Stalcup\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jamie Stalcup\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow\/\",\"name\":\"Behind the Scenes of Black Snow - TVDRAMA\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2022-12-13T13:50:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-12-14T14:22:08+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/0da12602224807cc7b179b8405018deb\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/behind-the-scenes-of-black-snow\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Behind the Scenes of Black Snow\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\",\"name\":\"TVDRAMA\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/0da12602224807cc7b179b8405018deb\",\"name\":\"Jamie Stalcup\",\"description\":\"Jamie Stalcup is the executive editor of World Screen. 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